Prince Philip’s car crash illustrates how the rest of us pay for the recklessness of the privileged

BBC treats Diane Abbott and other Corbyn allies with contempt. We need to reform the media now

McDonald's must stop breeding chickens so fast that their organs fail

Newspapers are mocking Beautiful Boy, but it is the first film which accurately reflects what I have been through with addiction

If Theresa May calls another election, prepare for a ‘short and sharp’ manifesto

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The countryside is turning brown in front of us. Fields of farmer’s crops are ripening early, vegetables are shrivelling, lawns are withering, leaves of trees are wilting, soil is cracking up as we weather a MET office “perfect BBQ summer”.

Though I would be wary of striking a match just this minute.

The UK is on tenterhooks as moisture evaporates from the environment around us and the word “wildfire”, more commonly found in California, Portugal and Australia, erupts into our lives. Well, not quite all our lives.

Easy to talk about in a newspaper article, but for those on the ground, hell to fight face-to-face a beast that sways, shimmers, leaps from fragment of grass, head of wheat or cackles through branches of spruce trees as it moves both with and against the prevailing wind.

Farmers are jittery as they move combine harvesters through bone-dry standing crops with fire wardens on duty with bowsers of water just in case.

Fires can start easily in hot, dry weather

A casual flick of a spent cigarette from a passing car, glint of sun through broken bottle (a magnifying glass is a deadly tool), that age-old fascination with fire driving mindless arsonists to torch vital winter forage for livestock.

Fire duty officers with binoculars located in high towers over large conifer forests are scanning for the first tale-tail plume of smoke.

In the drought year of 1976, my father, working for the Forestry Commission, coordinated fire crews across mid Wales as forests burnt from thicket of young trees meshed with flammable grasses which flared up into tree crowns leaving blackened topless trunks.

Not all fire is bad. Lowland farmers used to burn off cereal stubble to kill weeds after harvest until it was banned for air pollution reasons.

Legislation still allows prescribed or controlled burning – muirburn in Scotland or swaling in Exmoor – over winter into early spring to help manage inaccessible uplands. Small scale fast “cool” burns aim to remove rank vegetation, while not touching the soil, to stimulate new vegetation growth over land managed for farmed livestock and red grouse for shooting, as well as reducing risks of uncontrolled slower “hot” burning wildfires damaging deep peat soils.

A land manager told me he calculated there are five million tons of extra burnable biomass in his area over the last ten years due to a reduction of controlled burns.

Fires can be useful in the right circumstances

Controversy is never far from any land use employing fire. Its ancient allure as a handy tool is also its undoing in face of climate change driving regulations to keep carbon locked in the ground, ash off watercourses and smoke out of the air. Other officials worry over the fire danger rating when the Fine Fuel Moisture Code reaches a critical point during drought conditions.

When Michael Gove, Defra’s Secretary of State for the Environment, wants more land opened up to public access as a “public good”, he may also have to restrict entry when the smallest spark can cause a Saddlemoor-scale wildfire.

Fire is unpredictable. A well-managed burning operation can turn sour in a second and we can be smarter in also utilising other tools in face of increasing threats to habitat, carbon stores, wildlife, and human livelihoods in remote places.

Cutting can break up heather dominance, water levels can be raised to rewet bogs drained for food production during austere post-Second World War years, and pioneer trees such as birch can help prevent erosion of exposed soils.

Keep the barbecues on hold

One dry cold spring, I accidentally started a wildfire in my recently planted young woodland. How mortifying – especially as I was demonstrating to my children the danger of what one match can do on winter dead grass when a gust of wind made a flame jump as though the air was infused with petrol.

Even if, with blackened lungs and blistered face, I beat five-foot high flames with my lost shirt, you wouldn’t see any hint of fire damage today in a resiliently healthy anthill-infested wild wood.
But rather than test the MET office’s Fire Severity Index assessment of how severe a fire could become if one were to start, it might be best to hold the barbecue for now.

Prince Philip’s car crash illustrates how the rest of us pay for the recklessness of the privileged

BBC treats Diane Abbott and other Corbyn allies with contempt. We need to reform the media now

McDonald's must stop breeding chickens so fast that their organs fail

Newspapers are mocking Beautiful Boy, but it is the first film which accurately reflects what I have been through with addiction

If Theresa May calls another election, prepare for a ‘short and sharp’ manifesto

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